The Difference Between Tequila and Vodka
by Orien's Girl
Summary: Ginny is tired of ruminating over her unrequited love for Hermione, so she goes to a bar to try and forget about her. Oneshot. Girl/Girl obviously, Ginny's POV, contains flashbacks. Please review.


**So this is a short oneshot from Ginny's POV with flashbacks. Basically I've been having terrible writer's block on my Katie and Alicia story and this was created in the meantime. Please review :) **

**As always I don't own any of the characters or anything Harry Potter**

**Also I don't get this Beta'd so if there are any really annoying mistakes let me know and I'll fix it**

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_I hate tequila. _That's the first thing I think when the bartender drops off the shot. She's a middle-aged woman, still pretty enough for a woman around her age, good-natured, and from what I understand a bartender that you could come and talk to about your troubles on a slow Monday night. But, tonight was Friday night, her busy night, and her money making night. I fumble around in my pockets for the muggle money I got yesterday for my outing and, still unsure what the exchange is between muggle money and galleons, I leave a note on the bar table and try to seem confident about it. I notice when she picks it up she laughs, if it's a laugh of disdain or joyous surprise I can't really tell. All I really know is that I probably did not leave the norm.

After she leaves I look around at my surroundings. As much as I hate tequila I'm actually a bit relieved to see it. Someone buying me a drink means someone is interested, and my first night going to gay bar might not be a complete disaster. I finger the shot glass and see the bodies of women enjoying each other's company through the reflection prompting me to glance back and try to figure out which one of them could have possibly wanted to get me drunk, but it's like looking through a cabinet of potions and trying to figure out which one was the angel's trumpet draught. And, I never was good at potions, like I've never been good with women. . . In all actuality I was completely one hundred percent out of my element here. I was in strictly muggle territory with women who had a lot more experience than me. My reason for going to a muggle bar was simple, I had grown quite famous for dating Harry and here I kept my anonymity, but I still was uncomfortable. I felt my face grow hot, feeling like a merman out of water, _this was a good idea why?_

"Don't like tequila, or afraid of who the sender was?"

The voice comes from behind me and I turn around to see a pretty girl around my age, maybe a few years older, studying me with an amused half-smile.

I can't help but flirt back. "It's just tequila. . . it's not my drink. . ." I guess I should rephrase: I can't help but flirt back badly. My eyes wander down because at this point my face is starting to match my hair and that's just embarrassing. However, I take time to notice on my way down she has a very nice body. Slender, small, slight curves, if she were a quidditch player she would be a seeker.

Perhaps, I didn't do all that bad because she pulls a stool towards her and sits on it. Clearly, she's planning to stay awhile.

"Bad experience?" she asks nonchalantly.

X X X

"So who's going to be here tonight?" I asked.

"Hardly anyone. It's just going to be you, me, and my two roommates," Hermione answered. "A girl's night," she said shooting me a grin that made my stomach drop. Right there, that should have been my clue of how hopelessly I was falling in love with her. The looks she gave me that made me feel like I was getting on a broom for the very first time, the way any kind of attention seemed to ignite fireworks in my brain. . . and somewhere else. She unlocked the door to her apartment with her wand, and with a swish of her hand the lights turned on.

"So what's going to happen if you accidentally start waving that thing around when your muggle roommates are here?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Please, Ginny, I'm more careful than that. . . but I have become very good at memory modification."

I could not help but grin. Hermione really started to let loose around this time. It was about two years after the Battle of Hogwarts. She had broken up with Ron about a year back. Perhaps I should have realized there was something odd about my sheer bliss when Hermione told me she was breaking up with him that was more than just happiness that she didn't have to be on the hand of some useless tosser the rest of her life.

"Then I'll be very careful not to cross you," I smiled deviously.

"Right now I'm a little more concerned with crossing Harry. . . who am I to corrupt you?" she said emptying the contents of her bag which contained quite an amount of tequila and a few limes to go around.

I snorted. "I'm hardly innocent. . . never did have tequila though."

"You've never gotten drunk with me," the bookworm answered simply. It was true as odd as it was, but it took awhile for them to grow close, even though there was always something about Hermione she liked. "Tequila is my drink of choice."

X X X

"It reminds me of someone," I answer honestly and I look up, and really take in what a pretty woman is sitting in front of me. She has long dark hair, a set of dark eyes to match, small thin lips, high cheekbones, an adorable nose. The nose part kills me a bit, I have a thing for noses.

She chuckles a bit at my answer. "An ex?"

I shake my head and laugh a bit ruefully. "Like, I deserve to be so lucky. . . She was a friend."

"Well those never end well. . ." She lets out another amused chuckle.

"She was straight too."

She laughs again. Apparently, unbeknown to me, I'm a riot. "Falling in love with a straight girl is like shooting yourself in the foot before a marathon. You're just screwed from the start."

"No!" I argue good-naturely. "I wish I was screwed from the start! The real problem was I never got screwed."

She doesn't laugh like I wanted her too, rather she bites her lip and says rather smoothly. "That's a shame."

Honest to Merlin, it was one of the smoothest deliveries I had ever heard, so of course the next thing I say has to sound really stupid. "Yeah, it would have been nice to. . . you know. . . get. . .bedded." The last word comes out as a question as it should because I have never heard anyone use that specific phrasing.

Now I'm rambling and she's biting her lip, not to be sexy, but to stop from laughing at my expense. "You haven't done this too often, have you?" she guesses.

I hang my head a little. "No."

X X X

"I've never ever had sex," Hermione said with a grin like she knew she had us. We all stared at her open-mouthed in unbelieving protest.

"You've never had sex?" I asked recovering first.

"Never ever," she said solemnly.

We were playing a drinking game. Her roommate, Monica had suggested it as she had found it to be very amusing when she had played it with her schoolmates in the past. If one person pronounced never doing something that you have done, then you take a shot. Needless to say, the three of us had to take shots.

I downed the cheap tequila and quickly put some lime in my mouth. They certainly did not buy the highest quality.

"So how come you've never had sex then?" Monica asked as I was stifling a burp.

"Just never. . . I don't know I haven't found the right guy I guess." Giving me an odd look she said, "You know me and Ron-"

"Hey," I said stopping her, "you don't have to explain to me. Although it does explain why he seemed extra sore when you broke up with him."

She rolled her eyes. "He seemed to think I owed him something. . ."

Just another example of how Ron was a git. Even then I knew Hermione was the kind of girl you waited for because it was worth every torturous minute on the sidelines hoping, even if you never got her in the end.

A couple of rounds later, everyone was getting pretty drunk. Hermione was already gone and in between confessions of what we've never done, she was sticking out her tongue and telling people to look how long it was. In all actuality, it looked very average to me, but she never believed me until she was sober the next day.

"Okay, okay it's my tongu- turn," I said distracted by Hermione. I racked my brain trying to think of something. "I've never ever. . . kissed a girl," I decided.

Everyone looked at each other until Hermione finally relented and took a shot to everyone's surprise. "Wait, hold up," her roommate Brenda said before I could say anything. "Hermione when the bloody hell did this happen?"

So she went into a story about how she went to a party with her old muggle schoolmates the summer before fourth year and how she did it on a dare. If she was not so drunk, Ginny knew she probably would have been a bit more embarrassed about it but tequila seemed to destroy her filter. A few days later when Ginny brought it up to her she was a bit more dismissive about it. The conversation ended with, "I mean it was a girl. . . I didn't like it."

It was times like this that Ginny knew she should have been aware. She should have realized how satisfying it was to hear that she had never slept with Ron, how sexy and dorky she looked wagging her tongue at everyone, and how slightly disappointing it was that Hermione was not interested in ever kissing a girl again. The little things should have been a tip off that she was falling for the gryffindor bookworm a little too hard.

X X X

She's smiles mercifully. "Let's start over then," she says and reaches over and grabs the tequila setting it aside from the two of us. "No tequila. I won't even drink it either. I'll buy us something else. Oh, and my name's Isabel."

"Ginny," I answer automatically.

"So um, just to be clear, you _are_ a lesbian right?" she asks. Her eyes are sparkling like she's teasing me. "You look like a deer caught in the headlights."

The last part throws me off. I know it's a muggle saying, I heard Hermione say it to her parents once, but at the moment I'm concentrating so hard on what headlights might actually be and why a deer would ever be caught in them that Isabel probably thinks I'm off my rocker.

"You look lost," she says instead as way of clarification.

"Oh. . . right," I say. I can't help but blush again which makes me even more embarrassed, but Isabel does not seem to mind. In fact, she looks a little pleased with herself that she has the uncanny ability to make my face turn the color of my hair.

"Tell me, are you always this nervous?"

X X X

"Well that's it," Hermione said with a grin. "We're moved in."

It was Hermione's suggestion we moved in together after I expressed my need to want to move out of the Burrow. A suggestion I quite liked at the time. It was a small house in a wizarding village remote from muggle populations. It was a nice place for the price and I loved it. I don't know what I was thinking though, that we would grow closer and Hermione might actually start to like me back even though I was still with Harry and she had started dating this guy? Perhaps I was really that delusional.

"Hermione, this is, this is great," I said returning the smile. "So much nicer than living at home." I put my arm around her waist and gave her a little squeeze. "How do you come up with such great ideas?"

"Oh I don't know if it was such a great idea, Molly might be mad I took her only daughter away."

I rolled my eyes. "I should have moved out a long time ago anyway. Mum's not so keen on me moving in with Harry though. You know how old fashion she is."

Hermione chuckled and brushed away a flyway strand of hair out of my face. "As long as you don't get too homesick," she said with a smile.

I sighed, "I'm starting to miss the ghoul in the attic already."

She laughed and left my side to go to the kitchen to take out shot glasses and a bottle of tequila. "Well, I can always go in the attic and start banging pots and pans around if that'll make you feel more at home."

"A true friend," I replied joining her in the kitchen.

"To our new place," she said handing me a shot. Our fingers touched as she handed me the drink, and I felt the usual drop in my stomach that accompanied any casual touch from her.

"Here, here," I said and the taste of tequila burned down my throat.

X X X

"To be honest," I say a lot bolder than I feel, "I only get this nervous around beautiful women."

Isabel looks a bit surprised, but pleased, and for the first time she looks like the one who doesn't quite know what to say. Her speechlessness is how I know I nailed it. She recovers though, and grants me a smile that I'm steadily growing more and more fonder of as our conversation continues. "You know there's something about you Ginny," she says, "you seem like you can be quite the surprise."

"Believe me," I respond thinking about how if this ever takes off and becomes serious I'll have to tell her I'm a witch, and not just a witch, but a witch who fought in a war and was dating, arguably, one of the most famous wizards of all time for a while, "you have no idea."

"Maybe I'll just have to stick around for the ride then." She stops the bartender and orders a couple of shots of vodka. When they come she pushes one towards me. "Have you ever had vodka before?" she asks.

"Once or twice," I reply honestly.

"Well," she says not quite seriously, but at the same time not joking. "I promise you won't have the same aversion to it that you have for tequila." She holds my gaze allowing me to realize what a nice shade of brown her eyes are.

"Bottoms up," I say, and we both down our shots.

X X X

It started off great at first (living with Hermione) just like I wanted it to, but then my great awakening started to happen. I started notice how my stomach flipped when she casually touched me, how I couldn't help but smile whenever I heard that laugh of hers, how I would catch myself staring at her for no reason at all. She would pop into my mind when I really should not have been thinking of her. I would think about her face, and her smile, and laugh when I was with Harry, and although I never said it out loud in his presence her name was always on my lips when I came.

Of course this was crazy. She was my friend, my very straight friend with a boyfriend she was in love with, (who I had to admit was an awesome guy that knew how lucky he was to be with her) but I couldn't help it. I wasn't _falling_ in love with Hermione because that had already happened when I was too blind to admit it to myself. I was _already_ in love, and I wanted to be in love with her, but it came with complications.

Hermione, I knew, was not interested. I wanted to tell her, but I knew it would be quite pointless, as I also knew she did not want to hear me say it. I hated myself for falling for her. Being ashamed of my feelings was only the half of it, I had betrayed Harry too.

I wanted to blame someone for me recognizing so late that I fancied women, because after I realized my affection for Hermione all I did was eyeball other women. I blamed my upbringing and what I was taught was right and proper. An old-fashioned and out-dated sense of morality. . . but even then you could only blame that so much.

I was confused and I could not talk to Hermione, and I did not want to talk to her because the more I thought about it the more I realized how obvious I could have been around her. I was terrified she knew or would find out and hate me for it. Our friendship suffered. I don't know how it started or how it sustained, but we started to rarely talk to each other. Only if we had to were words exchanged, which proved to be not that often. I ended up breaking up with Harry because I knew it was not fair to him. Hermione went to comfort him and never once said anything about it to me, and so I hated her for that, although I wasn't much surprised. We waited until the lease was up and went our separate ways. I can still hear her curt and stiff, "Goodbye," before she grabbed her last bag and left through the door.

I never responded.

X X X

Some shots later, she's telling me a joke about a golfer I don't understand because I have no idea what the shite golf is, but I'm enjoying myself. We got ourselves a tiny booth in the corner and while she's telling me stories I'm running my hands through her dark, curly hair. My back is to the wall and she's leaning on me, the back of her head is on my collarbone. She smells like coconut.

"So am I ever going to hear about this tequila girl," she asks looking up at me.

She really is quite beautiful. I notice a few freckles sprinkled around her cheeks as she looks up at me with a look of curiosity on her face. They're not dark enough to be noticed from far away, I doubt I would have ever seen them if our faces weren't inches apart.

"She was my best friend," I answer honestly, "and I was in love before I even realized that I fancied her."

"I'm sorry," she says frowning.

I give her a very Weasley-like smile, one that Fred and George would give before a huge prank. "I wouldn't feel too bad for me, I seem to be doing alright now." I remove my hand from her curls and rest it on her arm, lightly tracing circles with my fingertips on her tan skin. I breath in deep and sigh feeling very content. This night was going far better than I imagined.

"Ginny?" she asks uncertainly. She moves her body from mine to look me square in the eye.

"Yeah?"

"Do you want to get out of here?"

I imagine I give her something of a nervous look, but she doesn't let that daunt her. She puts one hand on my waist, the other on my cheek and reels me in with her eyes. I've never been with a woman before, but I've been with enough guys to know how to kiss. Her lips are soft and inviting, her tongue gently probing for entrance. I kiss her back newly alive, loving the feeling of her soft lips, smooth face, and the way her long hair got in both of our faces. She tastes like vodka.

She pulls away gently and I'm so pleased I don't know what to think except that I love kissing her and I want to do it again.

"So is that a yes?" she whispers quietly.

I nod not knowing what to say. She grabs my hand helping me out of the booth and leading me out of the bar. She flags down what I imagine what must be a taxi from what I remember Hermione saying about them. She says something to the driver and ushers me inside.

X X X

Unsettled. I have always been a bit unsettled whenever I think of Hermione now, or on those rare occasions when I see her. Since I've broken up with Harry and our falling out as friends I see her on occasion at the Burrow which is never by choice. We say our pleasantries for politeness sake without really meaning them, and although I honestly have no idea what she thinks of me, I have a feeling it is probably not as bad as I imagine. I still care for in that way that someone who has a big impact on your life can never warrant your hate. I still feel frustrated on occasion though, about our falling out, but I won't ever hate her. I just hate tequila. I just hate the memories.

X X X

The taxi pulls up to an apartment complex, and she hands the driver some muggle money. We both get out and head up to her door. She flicks on the light and our lips are together the moment we close the door. We stumble through the doorway, make our way to the kitchen, and find what must be her bedroom. She falls on the bed taking me with her. Her hand finds mine and our fingers intertwine.

She's no Hermione. Hermione would never do something like this. Hermione only does things properly after the proper amount of time with the proper people. But, I quite prefer Isabel the way she is. I like her free spirit, and the way she whispers in my ear that she knows this is my first time with a woman (something that is probably quite obvious to her when I start gawking at her chest for an unseemly amount of time when she takes her bra off) and I should just relax.

She also whispers that she really likes me. My whole body tingles when she says it, and this time I know it's okay to tell her I fancy her too.


End file.
